7 Points
By Chaoseternus
Adama cursed as the latest fuel report dropped from his shaking hands to the desk. Fuel usage, unsurprisingly considering they were sweeping every system for fuel as they passed through, was up. It could have been worse, Tyrol had managed to reduce the amount of fuel the shuttle's and Raptor's used with some judicious tinkering, though nothing could be done to any of the Vipers without compromising the fighters performance. At least they weren't shuttling to every ship all the time for census taking and ship surveys. They had been finished a week before and all the necessary work, for the moment, were completed.
Now they were just frantically training and recruiting new warriors from the civilian populace, and waiting on the first Vipers, which would be mark two's, to arrive from the forge ship. Mark two's. Well, they had proven immune to the Cylons computer tricks so far, but the more advanced features on some of the later marks would have been useful at times. Unfortunately, the forge ship was not designed to make any advanced electronic systems, and so for the moment Mark twos was the best they could hope for.
It was being worked on, they had one ship that carried more electronic workshops than most and they were considering converting her into a dedicated electronics ship, but that was no go due to a lack or resources at the moment. When that came online, they would be able to start building replacement Raptors, create fire control systems so they could start adding some form of defensive weaponry to the civilian ships, only 1 in 5 of which had any weapons systems at all, and of those, only two had reasonably up to date systems.
He did wonder as to the lack of Cylon attacks though, it was out of character. They knew that humanity would one day return and exact revenge on them for the destruction of the colonies if allowed to escape the cylons, so why were they being allowed to escape? It did help lend credence to Dualla's theory of other warships surviving the destruction of the colonies. Several times she had thought she heard very faint transmissions from the Battlestar Pegasus, and at least one battlecruiser during the nightly sweeps through the day's backlog of transmissions the Galactica's antenna had received, but dismissed as static. That had become a hobby for her, and one Adama smiled upon, already they had found one fleeing Passenger Liner, the Pacifica's Glory, Flagship of the Pacifica Line , and been warned about one cylon attack because of it. Needless to say, they weren't there when the cylon's arrived.
A knock at the door distracted Adama from his thoughts, and he looked up in time to see a faintly smiling Tigh enter the room.
"Just received a report of tylium on the fifth planet of this system, not confirmed as yet, the Raptor is just landing now, but it looks promising. No mention of cylon presence anyway"
"Thanks Tigh" Adama rose from his seat, moving towards the door. He wanted to ask the Raptor crew about the fuel himself.
Adama looked up blinking from the Raptors report as Skip-jumpers words registered, "Excuse me?"
"An artifact, sir" the scarred pilot, his face showing the evidence of his all to recent burning at Ragnar, replied nervously. This was his first flight since Ragnar, and up till now he had felt it was a good one, having found the Tylium the fleet so desperately needed. The look Adama was giving him was starting to shake that belief.
"What kind of artifact?"
"Looked kobolian sir, a large round monument made of an unknown material, marked with some unknown symbols. It doesn't appear to have been visited for hundreds of years judging by the way the forest had grown around it. Only spotted it because the unknown material it's made of lit up the sensor board like a nuke detonating at close range sir"
"These symbols?" Adama asked, flipping through the papers on his desk, to find the copy of the symbols from the scrolls.
"At least two of them were on the device sir, I'm sorry, I don't know about the rest" Skip-jumper replied after a moment.
Adama dismissed the pilot, smiling inside. If this device had the symbols on… he needed to see it, personally.
Tigh watched uneasily as several ships, including several of the most valuable, the forge ship, the refinery ship, broke away from the fleet and flashed into hyper, heading for the nearby system and it's fifth planet, escorted only by Vipers , and the lightly armed Hell's Runner.
For now, he was in charge of the fleet, and he didn't like it. He knew very few people on the ship would obey him as readily and unquestioningly as they would Adama, but he knew Adama's reasons for going to the fifth planet, and he understood it, even if he didn't particularly like it.
That monument could potentially be a major clue, to help them confirm earth's location, or… he shrugged, it might not be. But without checking, how will you know?
And if they were attacked Galactica couldn't go running to the rescue. Too many jumps with too little maintenance had shook something loose in Galactica's hyperdrive. It would be another twelve hours at least before they were ready to jump.
Adama was on his own.
Adama walked out of shuttle with a grimace, raising his hand to deflect the brightness of the sun. It had been too long since he was on a planets surface, and he had become far to used to the closely regulated artificial environment of the Galactica. He grinned, Kara would no doubt tell him he needed to get out more.
"It's over this way, Commander"
He nodded, following Skip-jumper to the device, through a crude path through the forest, obviously hacked free of vines and undergrowth by Skip-jumper on his initial survey.
Two minutes later he spotted the device, and nodded. Those were the symbols, plus others. Too many around the ring to be another course, but it appeared Skip-jumper was right, this was kobolian.
"Make sure you fully record the artefact" Adama ordered, then walked forward to inspect the device closer for himself.